Yet the genius of Her Smell is that it's not about Becky. It's about the chaos she causes. Moss and Perry could let her dominate the frame as she does the room, but each sequence is about how everyone else deals with the damage she leaves behind.

This documentary is the sort of film that will leave both young and old(er) film fans grinning like the boys (and one girl) who dreamed the whole fantastic, mad scheme up in the first place.

I’m not sure I’ve laughed harder all year than at Gosling in a bathroom stall, accidentally dropping a lit cigarette down his pants leg.

This Tim Robbins-helmed political satire about demogougery makes for an appropriate election-season re-release.

Once the rodeo's over, where do the sweethearts go? Beesley, thankfully, doesn't end the film with the end of the rodeo, but there's a potentially more interesting follow-up doc ghosting right behind this one.

The director avoids turning this into some form of misery tourism, which would be a real risk in less adept hands: yet the story is told with such a uniform tone that it’s hard to remain emotionally engaged.

What's most memorable about Wilde is Fry's near-perfect encapsulation of the artist. It's a performance equal to the legend it portrays.

Even compared to his last film, the bifurcated dual character studies of In Our Day, A Traveler’s Needs feels less like a completed movie and more like an acting exercise.

Everything that was sharp in the original text has been rounded and buffed.

Knockout ensemble performances like these don't come around all that often, though, and when they do they ought to be savored.

The situation is not too far removed from that of Jayson Blair and The New York Times. The corporate oversight in place to catch deceptions is lulled into becoming part of the deception. Mahowny wanders through this film as if waiting to get caught, forced into deeper gambling debt because no one applies any brakes.

A rousing, girl-positive, indie success story whose dynamic rhythms deliver a connecting punch.

Sometimes the most thrilling thing a film can do is shake the shackles of its own preordained genre as you're watching it. The result might turn out to be a deal-breaking tonal trainwreck, but when such a hybrid works – and Spring, the second feature from directing team Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, does work – it can make for an improbably lovely experience.

Eccentricities, though they are essential to the story, nevertheless come across as too pat and planned in Unstrung Heroes. Despite my inability to dismiss the film's uncomfortable flaws, these were not so distracting that I had anything other than an enjoyable experience while watching the movie and was awash in a small puddle of tears at the end.

Rodeo is engaging and gritty, but what makes the whole film hold together overall is Ledru. She gives gives Julia a real presence and believability that isn’t always made explicit through the narrative.

Teetering toward made-for-TV in its facile depiction of Walter’s many wives and veering tonally from too broad to totally mawkish (the score wants to arm-wrestle tears out of you), The Friend is all soft edges.

Hathaway and Sudeikis totally nail their respective roles (kudos to the great Tim Blake Nelson, to boot), and while Colossal falls shy of perfection, so does real life.

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City presents little to augment the knowledge of people already versed in this debate. However, it’s a fine introductory lesson for those who are not.

My advice: Go; see; laugh yourself silly.

What it lacks in charm, it compensates for with audacity and single-mindedness of vision.

This is one time Texas can't keep its weird political landscape to itself: What happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas. When it comes to textbooks, what happens in this state is of national concern. Nothing less than the education of our nation's next generation of citizens is at stake.

Like every good musical, Emilia Pérez is a movie with big feelings, even if the feelings sometimes (often) outpace the logic.

For a comedy about an old weapon with a dulled blade, Sword of Truth is razor sharp in just about every way.

Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man is a gritty, nasty piece of work.

If there's a depressing note to Piketty's circular view of history, it's his belief that egalitarianism often springs from catastrophic disaster ("everyone is equal in death" becomes a refrain), and that it's the slow grind of extreme wealth and extreme poverty that breeds those disasters.

One thing Siegel got absolutely right in this film is the casting.

Yes, the action sequences are hilarious, and yes, the design department gets to cut gloriously loose with the kaleidoscopic, shifting microverse of the Quantum Realm, but this is first and foremost about family.

The House of Sand is a more transparently ambitious, prestigious "woman's picture" than Waddington's previous feature, 2000's "Me You Them."